After a brilliant start of the year with both awards for its CD and successful concerts, Linea is ending this sunny spring by its first US tour, summerized under the "Overseas" concept .

Let's recognize first that exchanges in new music were quite rare for a long period, between France and the USA, especially for differences in the aesthetic approach. At Linea, we love to cope with differences, and to build multicultural projects. The "Overseas tour" is run by this interest that Linea devotes to other countries or cultures, as we already did, for instance, with Korean ensemble TIMF .

First step of this trip to America takes place in New York City, where Linea performs a common concert with its local "brothers in arms" of the Talea Ensemble, on 4th june 2011 , at the Lincoln Center, for a concert including many world premieres commissioned to french and american composers.

Then, the ensemble will take part to the June in Buffalo Festival , organised by the Department of Music of the Buffalo University. The festival is dedicated to composers. Linea gonna participates to workshops with young composers, ending with a concert where the pieces will be premiered on 9th june . Another "french-american" concert will follow up on 11th june .

Both NYC and Buffalo projects are focusing on the french-american musical dialogue : it features a crossover of both musical scenes, their aesthetic streams and genres. Programs are including composers from both sides of the Ocean. That’s why we have chosen the « Overseas » concept to summary our project.

A central figure of the project will be french composer Brice Pauset , whose music has been rarely performed in the USA. He will be teaching at the June in Buffalo Festival to young newcoming composers coming from all over the world.Besides, his music will be played twice by ensemble Linea.

This US tour is a big opportunity for Linea to encounter the american musical industry and open new pages between french and american cultural cooperation. Other projects with Boston and Houston are already under construction for 2013...

We'd like to thank our partners who supported us in this project, and especially the FACE. We also thank warmly Alex Lipowski and Gail Wein in New York, and David Felder in Buffalo, for their motivation and efforts.

Photo (c) David M. - www.lejapon.fr

Our current CD "Ensemble Linea plays Eötvös" has been awarded yesterday evening at the Bastille Opera in Paris by the Lyric Recording Academy.

Already awarded on 2nd march 2011 in Hungary, by the Fonogram Price of the best new music album of the year, the CD gets a new recognition, now in Linea's homeland.

« Linea is a very innovative ensemble and I'm really happy that this portrait CD gets such a positive greeting. The Ensemble Linea entirely desserves it"  (c) Péter Eötvös, commenting this new award.

It is the right moment to remind that you can buy this CD online on our website here.

We'll be happy to celebrate this with our nice audience in frame of our very upcoming concerts .

Linea performs on tuesday 29th march 2011 at Ars Musica Festival in Brussels, a hungarian music programme, crossing over the generations, from Bartok, Ligeti until Péter Eötvös.

By playing "Sonata Per Sei" we celebrate live the release of our last CD devoted to Eötvös.

All details about the programme in english here and in dutch there

We are very happy of this first encounter with music lovers from Belgium and the neighbouring countries.

Our new CD just got the Fonogram prize of the best contemporary music album recorded in 2010, at the Hungarian music awards.

(c) Photo Mathieu Sautel 

By courtesy of the author, we publish the article from Strasbourg local newspaper Reflets DNA, cultural weekly supplement of the daily "Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace".

26 February 2011 - Strasbourg

PETER EÖTVÖS’S COSMIC THEATRE

An extraordinary discovery of an abundant musical universe. When Ensemble Linea records an album, we enjoy a magnificent event, a rare and precious moment.


Currently being “ensemble in residence” for five years at Royaumont Abbey, which consecrates their international dimension, Jean-Philippe Wurtz and Ensemble Linea from Strasbourg have released a monographic record that offers a captivating panorama of Peter Eötvös’s recent chamber music works. Two pieces of twenty minutes each are the album’s supporting pillars, ornamented with finely chiselled miniatures. Just to remind you, if necessary, that the Hungarian master doesn’t only compose flamboyant operas.

The opening track Sonata per sei (2006) pays homage to Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, adopting its principle of a dialogue between pianos and melodic percussions. However, the additional use of a synthesizer permits to explore a wider sonic landscape. From yesterday to today, a continuous renewal of musical language has indeed taken place, exploring new phenomena such as microtonal music, but without denying the roots. The constantly surprising inspiration ties in with both the stellar mirroring and the tragic gravity of the model – one movement evokes Bartok’s crossing of the ocean which leads him to his tragic end.       

While there’s a cosmic dimension at work in the imagination, it’s definitely a sense of theatre that constitutes the underlying texture of the record, as pointed out by Jean-Philippe Wurtz in a luminous introduction. This dramatic quality is most eloquently exemplified in Octet Plus, created during Musica festival in 2008, where a soprano part – integrated into the ensemble or, more often, a cappella – is layered over a pre-existing wind octet. Here, we can hear fragments of a radio play by Beckett that introduce contrasting characters somewhere between gossip, vain chatter and insignificance.

Listening closely, we understand what makes this encounter, this close collaboration between Linea and Eötvös so outstanding: the master’s artistic dispositions, his taste for scenic gestures, his sense of burlesque, and especially the alliance of precision and transparency that characterises his direction – all of these elements give a unique shape to the music. The pianists and percussionists of the Sonata as well as the soloists of the octet sound amazingly clear. With exciting versatility, soprano Allison Bell alternates between different Beckettian figures before her performance takes still another turn due to the blather in Russian taken from Chekov’s Three Sisters.

The final part of the record invites the listener to take a closer look into the composer’s inner life, thanks to two dreamful pages for piano poetically detailed by Benjamin Kobler. Psy, a curious trio for cimbalom, flute and cello (1996), presents an inward journey, an introspective self-portrait, before Mario Caroli’s flute unifies dirge and bird chirping in the final Cadenza. Linea offers an anthology full of invention and humanity that might receive the same laurels as the album Ivo Malec ten years ago.
       

(c) Christian Fruchart

Ensemble Linea plays Eötvös, BMC records 2010

Article translated from french by Martin Ternes.

As you might have noticed, we’re currently mostly speaking about our new CD , cause of course this release is a big step in Linea’s career. We’re currently fully engaged in the CD promotion campaign, and the first feedbacks are quite positive. We’ll keep on talking about that but actually our new CD is not the only highlights of the year in Linea’s activity, even if it will echo to several events we are taking part to.

 
Among others, Belgium based Ars Musica Festival where we play on 29th of march. We perform  there “Sonata Per Sei “ from the CD, one other Eötvös work, completed with compositions by Bartok and Ligeti : a programme, given at the Brussels Royal Conservatory , which considers Péter Eötvös in his Hungarian musical context.

Beside Belgium, Linea continue to export his art outside the French boundaries. In june we cross the ocean to experience the American world of new music. First we join our new Yorker  “brothers in arms” of the Talea Ensemble for a common concert in New York City, introduced by a debate focusing on the aesthetic differences between French and American way of composing new music…Then we go upward to the northwest of the New York State, for a one week residency at the June in Buffalo festival, powered by the Music Department of the Buffalo University . In there, we gonna work with the composition students during several master classes and workshops, and give a concert aswell. In both New York and Buffalo, the main motto is "French and american dialogue in music" as concerts programmes feature a blend of works composed on both sides of the Atlantic. An exciting project that we summarize by using the concept of “Overseas” which is the “code name” of this Linea’s US tour.

Here in France, Linea is back already in august in Royaumont , near Paris, where we are “ensemble in residence”, for a new cyclus of workshops and performances. Programme, to be completed, includes a summer seminary for professional musicians, devoted to Xenakis , which is also part of the programme of the concert we give in September in Royaumont.

Back to our hometown Strasbourg, we are – for the second year – included in the cultural season of the city theater “TAPS ” where we perform in may our “Cosmos” programme …an exploration of the universe, with Eötvös (“Kosmos”), Stockhausen (“Tierkreis”) and many other composers as space guides.

Also in Strasbourg, Linea comes back to famous local festival “Musica ” with a programme related with Royaumont, as we gonna perform works by composers who attended to composition sessions those last years.

Some other rendez-vous are on the way, like Zurich, probably in autumn. A rich and fruitful year for Linea !

Next monday 7th february 2011, on Strasbourg classical FM station Accent 4 the broadcast "Opus Café" (from 6 PM to 8 PM) focuses on Linea's new CD.

Olivier Erouart invites our artistic director Jean-Philippe Wurtz, for an interview between 7:15 and 7:35 PM, and some excerpts of the Cd gonna be played.

You can listen to Accent 4, if you live in Alsace on 96.6 in Strasbourg, 98.8 in Sélestat, 90.4 in Colmar, and here from all over the world (click on the player after the page opened)

Our new CD was hightlighted yesterday evening as "top of the week" on "Les Lundis de la Contemporaine" ("Mondays of New Music") on french public broadcasting France Musique :

"Among the recent releases, I'd like to present you a very nice monographic record devoted to Peter Eötvös, including recent works, mainly written during the last decade, and a majority of first recordings. This CD has been recorded in Budapest by a very good french ensemble I already told you about, the Ensemble Linea, conducted byJean-Philippe Wurtz", said to us the moderator Arnaud Merlin, as an introduction to Octet Plus.

We'd like to thank the team of the "Mondays of new music", for itsregular interest in Linea's work.